


heartless

by nezumiprefersdanielleovershakespeare



Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga), No. 6 - All Media Types, No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: M/M, unfinished! please read note at beginning of fic!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 12:47:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17867558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nezumiprefersdanielleovershakespeare/pseuds/nezumiprefersdanielleovershakespeare
Summary: AU where a rare disease causes people to have their hearts "stolen," leaving them with empty chests and a signature change to their appearance (abnormal eye color, abnormal hair color, or scar). The heartless have ten years to fall in love in order to get their hearts back. After being heartless for eight years, Shion meets Nezumi, but having his heart returned to him isn't as simple as he'd expected...





	heartless

**Author's Note:**

> Hey cats! WARNING: This is an unfinished fic that I wrote about a year ago. I'm not going to be finishing it, so don't bother asking. I've just decided to post some of my unfinished fics that I've written and abandoned over the years because...well...I have quite a lot of them...(so so so many)....and why not! 
> 
> So, read with caution, and as always, I hope you enjoy!

When his heart was stolen, Shion’s appearance changed. It always happened that way, but usually it was just one aspect – hair color, or eye color, or some sort of scar.

            For Shion, it was all three, his brown hair to white, his brown eyes to red. His scar was a snake over his skin. The snake was the rarest shape for these scars, and Shion’s wrapped around his entire body rather than just his leg as those few afflicted with snake-shaped scars could expect.

            “What does it mean?” Shion asked, looking at himself in the mirror the afternoon after his heart was stolen.

            His mother stood beside him, looking at Shion’s reflection, her hand reaching up to pinch a clump of his hair. “It means that your heart was bigger than most, so that when it was stolen, it left such a large hole in you that your body reacted more severely than usual.”

            Shion lifted his hand. Touched it to the scar on his cheek that ended an inch away from his nose. He hadn’t expected his heart to be stolen, but no one ever expected it. It was relatively rare – only about five documented cases in Japan a year, less than eight hundred worldwide.

            Each culture had their own legend to explain the reason certain people went to sleep with a heart one day and woke without a heart the next. Shion’s mother had always told of the story of the sky.

            Shion continued to look in the mirror as he pressed his hand to his chest. Felt nothing beneath his skin.

            “Remember, honey, it is an honor to have your heart stolen by the sky. I should have known it would come for yours. You have the best heart of all,” Karan said, covering Shion’s hand with her own.

            “Had,” Shion whispered.

            “What was that?”

            “I had a heart.”

            “And one day, you’ll have it again,” Karan promised.

            Shion let himself believe her. She’d never lied to him before.

*

Shion had his heart stolen when he was sixteen, exactly one month after his birthday. He was twenty-four now and had lived heartlessly for eight years.

            He was only without a heart literally – in all other senses, Shion was full of heart, kind and loving, probably more so than the average person.

            Even so, Safu still found it amusing to call him heartless.

            “That joke is really too old, Safu,” Shion complained, after Safu labeled him heartless for eating the last corner piece of the brownies Karan had baked for them as a housewarming gift.

            “You know the corners are my favorite,” Safu argued.

            “I let you have three out of the four corners!” Shion insisted. They’d just moved in together in a small two-bedroom apartment. It was Shion’s first time not living at home – he’d even taken his college courses online to save money – and he was glad at least for the taste of his mother’s baking to bring something familiar to the place.

            Safu, his childhood best friend, was of course familiar as well. It had been her idea that Shion move in with her, insisting two-bedroom apartments were cheaper than singles, and she didn’t want to live with a stranger, and it was about time Shion moved out of his childhood bedroom above the bakery anyway.

            In an apartment of Shion’s own, Safu claimed, he’d have more luck finding his heart.

            “Should we go out tonight?” Safu asked, standing up from the couch where the pan of brownies had sat between them as they’d watched a sitcom playing on television.

            “Out?” It was almost eleven. Shion was looking forward to bed.

            “The point of moving here is for you to get your heart back, isn’t it?”

            “Is it?” Shion asked, confused, while Safu looked down at him, her hands on her hips.

            “You couldn’t fall in love while you were living with your mother, no one would take you seriously. Now, you have your own place.”

            “I share this place with you.”

            “You have your own bedroom.”

            “I had my own bedroom at home,” Shion reminded.

            “That bedroom had Legos in it. Living with your mother is a red flag, Shion, you would have looked ridiculous to the dating world. Now, you’ll be a catch, but you can only get caught if you go out and meet people. I’ll be your wingwoman.”

            “Get caught?” Shion wondered, while Safu bent down, grabbed his hand, pulled him off the couch.

            “Ten minutes to change, then we’re going out. I already researched the best bars nearby. We’ll find your heart in no time.”

            “I’m not in a rush,” Shion mumbled, while Safu pushed him down the hall, depositing him at his room door before turning to her own.

            “You should be. If you go ten years without a heart – ”

            “I know,” Shion interrupted, waving his hand at her.

            Safu pointed at him. “You only have two years left.”

            “I’m fully aware of that.”

            “You should have some urgency.”

            “Okay, okay, I’ll go to the bar with you.” Shion went into his room, closed his room door and heard Safu’s close across the hall, then heard her shout through both their doors –

            “And if you come out wearing khakis, I’ll change you myself! Put on something sexy for once!”

            Shion stared helplessly at his closet, which he’d only just filled that afternoon with the clothes he’d folded in a cardboard box. _Sexy?_ He owned only his professional clothing for when he taught at the university, and the sweats he wore around the house, and the jeans he wore on weekends spent at the bakery, which had mostly become stained with fruit mixes or melted chocolate.

            Shion found a pair of un-stained jeans. He pulled off his sweats, yanked on the jeans, and stripped his t-shirt, though he wasn’t sure what to replace it with.

            In less than a minute of searching his newly stuffed drawers, Safu was coming into the room without knocking.

            “I could have been naked,” Shion objected, noting that Safu was in a short black dress he hadn’t seen before. “When did you get that?”

            “Your closet is terrible, Shion,” Safu replied, distracted with her head in Shion’s closet.

            “Guys wear t-shirts in bars all the time.”

            “I should have bought you something myself. We’ll go shopping this weekend. In the meantime, wear this, it’s the best color on you.”

            Shion took the dark blue button up Safu held out. He pulled it on and buttoned it while Safu scrutinized him.

            “I guess you look okay,” she offered. “Sort of like a professor, though, but some people go for that.”

            “I am a professor. And you’re not really boosting my confidence here.”

            “You look handsome, Shion, you always do, but that’s not enough. You’re trying to get your heart back.”

            “My mom says it’ll come when it comes.”

            “I don’t have the patience for that,” Safu replied, as if it was her heart that was lost.

            She left Shion’s room, and he followed her, putting on his shoes beside her and grateful she had no comment on them before she led them out of their new apartment.

            The sky was dark, and Shion looked up, found himself searching the stars, a habit he’d had even before he’d lost his heart. A habit he’d had since his mother had told him how hearts were stolen, and where they went before they were returned.

            _The sky was born dark and alone, and it craved the warmth of humans. It began to steal the hearts of different people. At first it just took one, then more and more and more until there were too many to count. Even then, when the sky looked at itself in its reflection on the surface of the ocean, it saw more darkness than light. So it keeps stealing hearts, hoping one day it might fill in all the empty spots._

            Shion knew this was not true. He understood the science of astronomy, he understood what stars were, what the blackness between them was.

            Even so, some part of him, despite his rationality, believed his heart was up there, bright and blinking back at him.

            And as nonchalant as he acted for Safu, he hoped more than he could bear that before it was too late, the sky would give it back.

*

It was a week after they’d moved into their apartment, and a week after Safu had started dragging Shion to bars nightly – even on week days – that Shion saw him.

            “What about him?” Safu asked.

            “Who?” Shion asked back, not looking at his friend, preoccupied with the man at the end of the counter of the bar who was sitting with his profile to them, running his finger along the edge of his glass.

            “The man you’ve been staring at for the past five minutes,” Safu replied, and Shion felt his empty chest squeeze, looked abruptly away from the man to find Safu’s sly smile. “He’s cute,” she offered, her eyes slipping back to the man. Their own table was across the room, against the opposite wall from the bar and the man Shion looked at again with Safu’s words. “More than cute.”

            “He probably doesn’t have my heart,” Shion said, not knowing why he said it when the draw he felt, the pull to this man, was undeniable. As if gravity wanted Shion to get up from the small table across the room. As if the stars wanted Shion to get just a little closer.

             “Why not?” Safu asked, and Shion didn’t have a reason for her.

            He stood up slowly and was pushed by Safu so that he nearly stumbled, but he regained his balance, turned back to glare at her grin, and walked across the room to the counter of the bar, then along the counter to the very end of it where the man sat.

           The man looked up, and Shion instantly had a reason – a _Why not –_ to offer Safu in response for why this man probably did not have his heart. Not probably. He definitely could not be the one to return Shion’s heart.

            “Oh,” Shion said, his disappointment a bitter taste in the back of his mouth because it was clear, immediately, that this man had had his heart stolen too.

            The man’s eyes – silver, not natural, the eyes of a man without a heart – drifted slowly over Shion’s features.

            “A little dramatic, don’t you think?” the man finally said.

            Shion leaned his hip against the bar. His legs felt weak. The man’s voice was low and lovely, but Shion had no reason to be talking to him. The person who could retrieve Shion’s heart had to have a heart to begin with. Those were the rules. Someone else with a stolen heart could be no use to Shion.

            “What?” Shion asked back, realizing he couldn’t make sense of the words. His own voice was quieter than he’d meant it to be, matching the man’s volume.

            “Eyes, hair, and the scar? A bit of a show off, if you ask me.”

            Shion blinked. “I can’t control how I changed,” he argued, not knowing why he was arguing with a stranger. “You should know more than anyone.”

            The man had long hair, dark as the spaces of sky between the stars. His long fingers tucking a curtain of it behind his ear were pale as moonlight. “And why is that?”

            Shion knew the man was playing with him. He went along only because he wanted a reason to talk to this man a little longer. “You’ve had your heart stolen too.”

            At this, the man tilted his head. He had a gaze like the wind, something Shion could feel sweeping through his insides, emptying him out until he was not only heartless, but lungless and stomachless and bloodless and breathless too.

            “I’d have to disagree,” the man said quietly. Everything about him felt quiet – the tip of his finger trailing along the rim of his glass, the movement of his jaw as he spoke, the flicker of his curtain of hair unlatching from behind his ear and sweeping back over his cheek.

            “Disagree?” Shion asked. If he had a heart, he suspected it would be thundering. He was glad for the first time in his life of its absence. Glad for the quiet in his chest. The lack of anything thrumming, anything to distract him from keeping up with the man’s quiet words when he could hardly do so as it was.

            The man had a beauty about him that squeezed Shion’s chest violently.

            “I have a heart,” the man said, simply, as if it was the truth when Shion could clearly see otherwise.

            “No, you don’t.”

            “I think I would know.”

            “I’m looking right at your eyes, I can see they’re silver. No one is born with silver eyes, they had to have changed color when your heart was stolen,” Shion said, hearing the insistence in his own voice, as if he was trying to convince the man of what the man had to know himself.

            The man stopped tracing his glass. Wrapped his fingers around it. Inside was a brown liquid – whiskey, Shion assumed. He himself hated whiskey, the bitterness of it, the way it burned his insides. He was more careful with what he ingested now that he was heartless. He did not want to damage what organs he had left inside of him.

            The man sipped his whiskey. His eyes didn’t leave Shion – silver eyes, unnatural eyes, heartless eyes.

            “Do you want to feel it?” the man asked, when his glass was back on the counter, his fingertip back along the rim.

            He traced the lip of his glass counterclockwise. Shion watched this tracing while he turned the man’s words over and over in his head.

            “Feel what?” Shion asked, finally, unable to decipher them.

            “My heartbeat.”

            Shion hadn’t felt a heartbeat in eight years. He turned away from the counterclockwise tracing, studied the man’s expression, but there was nothing to read there, no sign that the man was serious and no sign that he was joking.

            Shion held up his hand, let it hover halfway between them. He waited for the man to laugh at him – it would be worth the humiliation, to hear what his laugh might sound like. But instead, the man was reaching out, touching Shion’s hand with fingers that had traced the rim of his glass.

            His skin was cool, and Shion almost flinched. He was used to his skin being colder than anyone’s he touched – anyone being his mother and Safu, mostly. Their bodies were warm, and his had turned steadily colder since his heart had been stolen until now it was much like ice.

            The man’s cold skin was only further proof. He was heartless too. Probably had been for even longer than Shion, since his skin was a shade colder. Maybe he was close to his allotted ten years. Maybe that was why he was lying about it.

            Shion let the man pull his hand to his chest anyway, to keep up this lie a few seconds longer. The man wore a white t-shirt beneath a black leather jacket. He did not hesitate before pressing Shion’s palm against the chest of his t-shirt, Shion’s fingers fanned. In Shion’s palm, immediately, there was a steady, solid thrum. Shion forgot himself, forgot this was a stranger, stepped closer to the man who was pivoted toward him on his stool, pressed his hand harder into the man’s chest, warm beneath his t-shirt unlike his bare fingers had been.

            Shion’s lips were open. He stared at his hand. The man had moved his own fingers from Shion’s hand, no longer guiding him, no longer holding Shion’s hand down, but Shion didn’t move.

            The man’s heartbeat felt strong, hard, as if knocking against Shion’s palm, as if slipping into it, traveling up Shion’s arm, flooding the empty space in Shion’s chest that had been in want for eight years, filling him with what he lacked.

            Shion looked up from his hand on the man’s chest. The man raised his eyebrows so that they were almost hidden in the dark sweep of his bangs.

            “Verdict?”

            “You have a heartbeat,” Shion breathed.

            “I thought so, but it’s always nice to get a second opinion. You can stop feeling me up whenever you like.”

            Shion didn’t want to, but moved his hand. He curled his fingers around his fist as if he still held the heartbeat in there and pressed his fist to his chest, trying to transfer what might be left of what he’d felt.

            He missed it already. Wanted it back.

            “What about your eyes?” Shion asked, to distract himself from his want.

            “Guess I’m just naturally odd looking,” the man said, his lips twitching as if suppressing a smile, and Shion agreed that this was a moment to smile, what a ridiculous thing to say – the man was anything but odd looking.

            He was beautiful.

            “If you have a heart…” Shion started, his voice trailing off because he hadn’t meant to speak aloud in the first place, he’d only just come to the realization in his head.

            If the man had a heart, then he could be the one to return Shion’s heart.

            The man said nothing to Shion’s half-sentence. He took another sip of his whiskey, then nodded, a small tip of his chin, at the stool beside his.

            “If you’re going to gape at me, you might as well take a seat while you’re doing it,” he offered.

            Shion sat slowly. His knee knocked once against the man’s. “My heart was stolen,” Shion said, as if the man might not have noticed.

            The man said nothing. Shion watched the silver eyes trace the scar on his cheek, dip down to his neck.

            “It’s been eight years,” he added, and the man’s eyes flicked back up to his own.

            “Was your name stolen along with it?”

            Shion blinked. “No.”

            The man smirked then, a sight so unexpected that had Shion had a heart, he knew it would have stopped right then. “Are you going to share it with me?”

            It took Shion a moment to remember it. “Shion,” he offered, relieved when it came back to him.

            “Heartless Shion.”

            It didn’t sound like a bad thing, when the man said it. “Who are you?” Shion asked abruptly, not thinking about the words before they came out his lips.

            The smirk grew. “I’m Nezumi.”

            “Nezumi,” Shion repeated. “Nezumi with a heart.”

            “You’re here looking for someone to find your heart. That’s why you’re talking to me.”

            Shion saw no reason to lie. He nodded even though the words did not seem like a question.

           “I should warn you then. I’m never going to find your heart. I’m not the right guy for that, so don’t go deciding anything like that on your own. You said it’s been eight years, right? Then save yourself some time out of that precious two years you’ve got left and set your sights on someone else. That guy over there isn’t too terrible looking, past the unfortunate facial hair. Bit of advice, try not to hesitate on your name again when you introduce yourself to him,” Nezumi said, pointing his pinky across the bar, but Shion didn’t even bother turning around to look.

           Shion had no desire to speak to anyone else at the bar. He felt Nezumi’s pull on him, and this feeling of being drawn meant more to him than anything Nezumi could say. He leaned forward, glad when his knee bumped the man’s – Nezumi’s – again. “If I’m talking to you because I’m looking for my heart, and you already decided you’ll never be the one to give it to me, then why are you bothering to talk to me?”

            “You’ve got the kind of look people have fetishes for,” Nezumi said, and Shion, again, could not tell if he was joking or not.

            “Are you one of those people?”

            Nezumi tilted his head back. Surveyed Shion for a moment so he felt warm all over, and it had been so long since he’d felt properly warm. “You should probably be fully undressed before I come to a conclusion on that.”

            Shion didn’t bother to think too deeply about it. He had a new apartment for a reason. This was the reason.

            “My place or yours?” he asked, and when Nezumi laughed, it was even more incredible a sound than Shion had braced himself for.

*

After the first night, Shion spent every night with Nezumi. He quickly forgot he was looking for his heart at all. He quickly forgot he had any motive to be around Nezumi other than his pure want.

            It was nights, mostly, when Shion remembered he was heartless still. He laid against Nezumi’s chest, pressed his cheek to the skin to feel Nezumi’s heartbeat shake his jaw. Nezumi would drift his fingers in Shion’s hair, aimless and gentle as a breeze.

            “Do you miss it?” Nezumi asked him, some day in the first week, and Shion nodded against Nezumi’s chest.

            “I feel emptier than I did when I first lost it, like the void in me is growing. Do you think it’s growing?” Shion asked, a question that had haunted him, that he’d never spoken aloud, but the words felt less terrifying when he pressed them against Nezumi’s skin.

            Though he’d only known this man for a week, Shion suspected he would fall in love with Nezumi very quickly, and he was correct about this. He had already fallen in love but would only realize it as a conscious thought two weeks later, when Nezumi argued with him about the price of raspberries at the grocery store. Shion would understand in that moment that there was no where he would rather be or nothing he would rather be doing than arguing with Nezumi in the grocery store over raspberry prices. Shion would press his hand to his chest in that moment, beside the palette of raspberries with Nezumi muttering about Shion’s lack of common sense beside him, and be certain he’d feel his heartbeat again.

            But that night, when it had only been a week, Shion did not know what he felt was love. He thought it was only want and the blissful happiness born from the cocktail of chemicals released to his brain due to the large amounts of sex he and Nezumi were having. He thought it was only hope that one day, Nezumi would be the one to give him his heart, despite all Nezumi claimed otherwise.

            Nezumi pushed Shion off his chest gently, rolled them over so that Shion was on his back, and Nezumi hovered above him. Nezumi placed his hand on Shion’s chest, and Shion closed his eyes, concentrated not on the stillness inside of him, but the loveliness of Nezumi’s touch, his skin warmed from their fucking, though Shion knew Nezumi’s fingers would cool again soon. They were constantly cold, even though Nezumi didn’t have an excuse like Shion did. He had a heart. He had no reason for cold skin.

            “How did you get used to the stillness?” Nezumi asked him.

            “I didn’t,” Shion replied. _Find my heart,_ he wanted to tell Nezumi, but only a week had passed, and he knew Nezumi was still of the mindset that he was not meant to be the one to find it.

            Nezumi laid back beside Shion, and Shion rolled back over, pressed himself back to Nezumi’s chest. That first week, Shion didn’t know he was in love with Nezumi. But he knew immediately he was in love with the feeling of life, undeniable, in Nezumi’s chest.

*

A month passed, and Shion met Nezumi after his play. The man was an actor, which shouldn’t have been surprising to Shion when he first found out. Of course he was an actor. He was a man people would pay to look at, to listen to, to admire.

            “For you,” Shion said, holding out a single rose when Nezumi walked out the back door of the theater. He knew Nezumi well enough, after a month, to know better than to get him a bouquet. Even a single rose felt risky, and Shion watched Nezumi eye the flower with some trepidation.

            Nezumi didn’t take it. He began walking, leading the way to his apartment.

            This was not the first of Nezumi’s plays Shion had gone to. It was the seventh. But it was the first time he’d seen Nezumi perform a production of Shakespeare’s, and Shion knew this was Nezumi’s favorite playwright.

            A flower had felt appropriate.

            “It’s polite to take gifts of admiration,” Shion said, walking beside Nezumi. It was Saturday night. Exactly a month since Shion had sat beside Nezumi in a bar. Exactly a month since Nezumi had warned Shion he wouldn’t be the man to return Shion’s heart. Exactly a month since Shion had tasted whiskey on Nezumi’s lips and decided he enjoyed the feeling of its burn more than anything else in the world.

            “It’s been a month, hasn’t it?” Nezumi mused. He slipped his hands in his pockets. Shion twirled the stem of the rose between his fingers. It was a white rose. He’d thought perhaps the symbolized romance of a red one might put Nezumi on edge.

            “It has,” Shion confirmed. He felt warm that Nezumi was aware of the timespan as well.

            “We should probably stop then.”

            “Stop what?”

            They waited at the edge of the sidewalk to cross the street. The night was cool, a gentle breeze that slipped up Shion’s jacket sleeves and pulled at the petals of the white rose Nezumi still had not taken.

            “You should go to your own apartment tonight,” Nezumi said.

            The crosswalk sign changed to indicate that they were safe to walk. Shion did not walk even so, and neither did Nezumi. Around them, the small cluster of people that had gathered walked forward, past them, leaving them behind.

            “I suspected the rose might freak you out. But not this much,” Shion told him.

            “It’s not the rose.”

            “I’m not asking you to find my heart, Nezumi. I’m giving you a rose to congratulate you on an incredible performance tonight. People in the audience threw roses at you on stage, didn’t they? I don’t see you giving them a fuss.”

            Nezumi pushed his bangs out of his eyes. His hair was in a thick braid over his shoulder. This one, Nezumi had weaved on his own, but Shion had braided Nezumi’s hair a total of nine times. Small braids, thick ones, French braids that he’d learned to do watching Youtube videos on his laptop while Nezumi sat against him, memorizing his scripts, complaining only when Shion tugged too hard.

            “The people throwing roses at me on stage didn’t want anything from me.”

            “I don’t want anything from you.”    

            “I told you the very first day I wouldn’t find your heart. I told you to find someone else.”

            “I remember, Nezumi,” Shion said, going along as he always did when Nezumi started again on this. He knew Nezumi would find his heart no matter what Nezumi insisted. It had to be Nezumi. Who else could Shion love this much?

            Shion had not told Nezumi he loved him. He thought it likely Nezumi knew this already. How could Shion hide such a consuming thing from such a shrewd man anyway?

            “You don’t know that. You’ve wasted a month messing around with me, what’s the point of that? Aren’t you worried? Haven’t you got less than two years left to find it?”     

           “We’re not just messing around,” Shion argued.

            He looked away from Nezumi to give himself a break from the hard silver of his gaze. The walk sign had changed back to _Don’t Walk_. People were gathering around Shion and Nezumi again at the corner of the curb to wait.

            “I told you from the start, Shion. We were just having fun, that’s it, now it’s been enough of that. Isn’t a month enough time wasted with me?”

            “I’m not wasting my time,” Shion argued. He could tell the walk signal had returned when the people began moving past again. Someone jostled Shion’s back, murmured _Excuse me_.

            Shion didn’t look away from Nezumi.

            “I can’t be the right person for you, Shion. I can’t fall in love with you, I don’t want you falling in love with me, how stupid can you be? I warned you about this a month ago,” Nezumi snapped.

            Without warning, he joined the walkers. Crossed the street abruptly while Shion watched his back, but before Shion could follow him, the signal was changing again.

            _Don’t walk._

            Shion listened to the street sign. He kept an eye on Nezumi until he could not see Nezumi any longer, but this did not bother him.

            He waited patiently, and when he was given permission to walk again, he crossed the street. Twirled the rose in his fingers. Avoided the thorns. Went to Nezumi’s apartment where he’d slept enough times to lose count, knocked on the door, and waited.

            It opened, and Nezumi stood in the doorframe. His hair had been let out of its braid. Shion was glad. Now he could braid it himself.

            “Go home, Shion. Better yet, go back to that bar, find someone else.”

            “I want you,” Shion told him. He knew Nezumi knew this already. There was no reason for Nezumi to act like it was news, for his expression to close off, for his sigh to be so heavy.

            “Shit, you’re really stupid, aren’t you?”

            “If it’s a waste of time, let me waste my time. It’s my time, right? What does it matter to you?”

            “You expect something from me, and you’re going to get all cranky when I can’t give it to you.”

            “Then let me get cranky! You get cranky all the time, you’re cranky right now, I’m putting up with it just fine,” Shion returned.

            “You’ll die without your goddamn heart! I promise you, Shion, I will not find it for you. It’s not supposed to be me.”

            Shion didn’t care that Nezumi was promising him such a thing. He knew better. He knew better.

            “You warned me. Now, you have nothing to worry about. If I die heartless, that’s on me. It’s not your responsibility to find my heart, we’ve cleared that up. Now are you going to let me in? I have to get up early for work tomorrow, so I’d rather not spend much more of the night arguing in your doorway with you.”

            Nezumi narrowed his eyes. He was so beautiful Shion hadn’t gotten used to it over the month that had passed, doubted he would ever get used to it.

            “I won’t give you your heart. You understand that.”

            “Yes,” Shion said. A lie, but he would lie over and over to spend another night with Nezumi.

            “Fine. Do what you want. Put your life in danger just to fuck me. How ridiculous,” Nezumi muttered, moving away from the doorway, and Shion smiled, walked into Nezumi’s apartment, headed to Nezumi’s kitchen to fill a glass with water and place the rose in it before joining Nezumi in the bedroom.

            While they undressed, Nezumi broke away from Shion’s kiss. “You swear you understand, Shion. Whatever you feel, I’m not going to love you. I’m not being harsh. This is just how it is.”

            “I understand,” Shion agreed. Anything to have Nezumi kiss him again, his mouth so warm it burned just like it had the first night, when Shion had wrongly blamed the alcohol for scorching his lips.

*

Nezumi broke his promise and fell in love.

            Shion knew this in many ways. The most telling was that Nezumi stopped accusing Shion of wasting his time, stopped telling Shion they were just having fun, stopped insisting Shion find someone else.

            There were other indications as well. Nezumi stopped throwing out Shion’s spare toothbrush that Shion would leave at Nezumi’s apartment. Nezumi talked to his manager about getting Shion a discounted season pass for his shows. Nezumi finally came to the bakery to meet Shion’s mother, and Karan took to him immediately, invited Nezumi into her kitchen and began teaching him how to bake. Nezumi visited Shion’s campus, had lunch with him between classes, even attended one of Shion’s courses, sitting in the back so that Shion didn’t notice him at first, only saw him in the large lecture hall when Nezumi’s hand shot up, his arm long and pale and one Shion had fallen asleep on top of enough times to recognize immediately.

            “Yes?” Shion had asked, trying not to smile. “You in the back, you have a question?”

            Nezumi stood up. “Yes, professor, I have a question. How much longer is this class going to last? I really just came here to fuck you in your office.”

            The entire class pivoted to look at Nezumi, who smirked while Shion fought to keep calm, inwardly deciding on what curses to use when he would shout at Nezumi later, when they were in private.

            “I believe you have the wrong classroom, sir. Please escort yourself out, I can assure you, I have no interest in your proposal now or at any time in the future, and I do not enjoy disruptions like this in my classroom from insolent individuals without any sense of civilized conduct.”

            And that night, Shion knew Nezumi loved him because for the first time, Shion received an apology from Nezumi. It wasn’t until after Shion spent ten minutes shouting at him, pausing only to catch his breath, to drink the glass of water Nezumi had stood up to fill for him wordlessly before sitting back down on the kitchen stool. He didn’t interrupt while Shion shouted. He watched Shion with full attention, hair tucked behind his ears, silver eyes softening with each word in a way Shion was too angry to notice

            “Are you even listening to me? How could you come in there and humiliate me like that? How could you undermine my authority? That’s where I work, Nezumi! That’s my career! Those students need to respect me, even though you clearly do not!” Shion continued, after downing his glass of water, slamming the empty glass on the counter.

            Nezumi nodded, and Shion assumed he was just teasing him, making fun of him, not taking him seriously.

            Shion stomped out of the kitchen. Down the hall to Nezumi’s bedroom, the door of which he slammed for good measure, not caring that it was Nezumi’s bedroom in the first place.

            He fumed in the center of Nezumi’s room, looking around for things he could throw and displace, but Nezumi’s room, like the rest of his small apartment, was mostly bare. His only possessions were books, and Shion went to a pile of them teetering on the floor, picked up the top one, considered tearing out the pages because his hands were shaking with his rage still.

            The knock on the door interrupted his contemplation.

            “Get lost, Nezumi!” Shion shouted, and of course Nezumi did not listen because Nezumi never listened.

            He came into the room, and Shion whirled around so Nezumi could see him, held the book up like a hostage.

            “I’ll tear out the pages, I swear,” he warned.

            Nezumi glanced only briefly at the book. His hair was down around his shoulders, still tucked behind his ears so that his face was uncovered as it rarely was. The expression revealed was softened, open, an expression that made Shion think of a child’s, someone small and innocent.

            It was so surprising to see Nezumi look such a way that Shion almost dropped the book. He forgot to back away when Nezumi walked up to him, stood in front of him, took the book from him and tossed it on the bed before taking Shion’s hands in his own.

            “You’re right. I’m sorry, Shion,” Nezumi said. His hands were loose around Shion’s fingers, like they might fall away any second.

            Shion swallowed. “About what?” Shion asked, forgetting, suddenly, everything he’d ever known – certainly everything about the past twenty-four hours.

            In the softness of Nezumi’s expression, in the clear light of day, Shion knew Nezumi loved him. There it was, in the space between his eyebrows. There it was, in the part of his lips. There it was, in the quiet of his gaze.

            “I was out of line going to your work and saying what I did. I was wrong to make you ever think I don’t respect you.”

            There it was again – _I love you, I’m in love with you_ – in the cotton of Nezumi’s voice.

            Shion nodded vaguely. “Yeah. You were,” he whispered. “You were wrong.”

            Nezumi leaned closer to him. Lips nearly touching his, but it was Nezumi’s breath that Shion felt after a second. “Forgive me,” he said, like he had done something terrible, and Shion thought it hadn’t been so terrible after all, there was no reason for Nezumi to be so genuine, for Nezumi to shed his usual sarcasm, for Nezumi to be without his familiar smirk, for Nezumi to drop everything Shion knew about him and turn into someone so gentle and soft.

            “Okay,” Shion agreed, if only to make Nezumi stop loving him so openly. Shion didn’t think his heart could take it.

            Of course, he didn’t have a heart. But for the first time in his life, he forgot this, and then Nezumi kissed him so carefully Shion forgot everything else too.

*

Shion was surprised that he didn’t wake up the morning after Nezumi’s apology with his heart returned to him, but this was not the only time he was surprised to find himself heartless.

            He expected his heart to be returned to him the night he walked into the bakery after close to find his mother teaching Nezumi how to dance in the kitchen.

            He expected his heart to be returned to him when Nezumi laughed so hard one afternoon that he collapsed on the kitchen floor, his body shaking against the cabinet.

            He expected his heart to be returned to him when Nezumi cried into Shion’s side one night after one of his nightmares, his fingers clutching Shion’s shirt so tightly they ripped a hole in the fabric.

            He expected his heart to be returned to him when Nezumi said casually one morning, mouth full of cereal so that the words got jumbled and Shion could barely make them out, _Might be more convenient if you just moved in here with me._

            He expected his heart to be returned to him when Nezumi greeted him one morning with nothing but a wordless kiss on the back of Shion’s neck as he walked to the fridge for the milk.

            He expected his heart to be returned to him when Nezumi got drunk and told Shion about his family that had died in a fire when he was eight with slurred words and clutching fingers and wide, wide eyes.

            He expected his heart to be returned to him every time he heard Nezumi singing in the shower.

            He expected his heart to be returned to him every time Nezumi traced his finger along Shion’s scar like it was only there for that purpose.

            He expected his heart to be returned to him every time Nezumi slipped his fingers through Shion’s hair when he walked by.

            He expected his heart to be returned to him every morning he woke beside Nezumi, especially the mornings Nezumi had not yet woken, the mornings when he looked so peaceful it could have broken Shion’s heart, if he’d had one to be broken.

            He expected and expected and expected, but Shion remained heartless.

*

After they’d known each other for eleven months, Nezumi brought it up for the first time.

            “I used to tell you I wouldn’t find your heart,” he said, looking down at his script still so Shion thought for a strange moment that somewhere in _Romeo and Juliet,_ one of them had their heart stolen, a part of the play Shion hadn’t remembered from high school when he’d read it last.

            Nezumi peered above his script book while Shion continued to stare at him. They were in the bakery, had just finished cleaning and locking up and were rewarding themselves at the corner table by the window with cups of tea and slices of cake leftover from Shion’s twenty-fifth birthday the day before.

            “Do you not remember?” Nezumi asked.

            Shion placed his fork carefully on his plate. “Yes. I remember.”

            “Well, you know that’s not true now. Right?”

            Shion squinted. “Are you trying to tell me you’re in love with me? Is that some sort of belated birthday present since you didn’t get me anything yesterday?”

            Nezumi looked back down at his script book, shaking his head. “I don’t know what stupid things go on in your head. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. You’ll be getting your heart from me.”

            “And no one else,” Shion added, for good measure, biting his lip when his smile threatened.

            Nezumi lifted his book higher so that it blocked his face, as if the words were suddenly too small, he needed a closer look. “Don’t be stupid,” he said.

            “That’s what you used to say. That I should go and be in love with someone else. Remember?” Shion asked, grinning fully now.

            “Go find someone else then. Let someone else try to put up with you for a change,” Nezumi snapped to the inside of his book.

            Shion swung his leg under the table, tapped Nezumi’s shin gently with the tip of his shoe. “I don’t want anyone but you.”

            Nezumi slammed his script down. “I figured you might be worried you’d be heartless forever, I’m trying to put you at ease here. Do you have to be so annoying?”

            “Am I being annoying?”

            “Incredibly.”

            “I’m at ease. Thank you for that,” Shion said, trying not to laugh at Nezumi’s disgruntlement.

            “Forget it,” he said shortly.

            “So you won’t be giving me my heart?”

            “Get it from someone else,” Nezumi muttered, picking up his script again.

            Shion smiled at the man, pulled Nezumi’s plate towards him and stole a bite of Nezumi’s cake even though Shion had not yet finished his own slice.

            “If you want to put me at ease,” he said, pointing his forkful of cake at Nezumi, “you could hurry up.”

            Nezumi glanced up from his script. He nodded once. “I know,” he said, in such a serious way that Shion forgot his own amusement, forgot the forkful of cake, forgot anything but the deadline for his heart – just one year and one month left now.

            Nezumi put down his script again, no longer looking disgruntled, no longer with an expression Shion could read past the heaviness of his gaze. He leaned a little over the table between them.

            “I’ll find it in time. Do you trust me? Will you wait a little longer?”

            Shion could do nothing but nod. He had no choice but to trust Nezumi. He had no choice but to wait.

*

A month later, Shion was still waiting. Officially, Shion had been heartless for nine years. He had exactly one year left.

            “I’d give you mine if I could,” Nezumi said quietly, while Shion paced.

            “I don’t want yours, I want mine! I have a year left.”

            “That’s a long time.”

            Shion stopped pacing only to give Nezumi a concentrated glare. “You get upset when I cut the carrots the wrong way. Stop being calm, get upset about this with me!” Shion shouted at him. They were in Shion and Safu’s apartment, where they weren’t often after Safu had complained about the volume of their sex.

            Safu came home while Shion was shouting, shutting the front door behind her and locking it before entering the living room, where Nezumi sat on the couch, and Shion paced in front of him.

            “Hi, Nezumi,” she said, after catching Shion’s arm mid-pace to give him a kiss on the cheek before releasing him again. “The usual?” she added.

            Nezumi nodded once.

            “A year!” Shion reminded Safu.

            “That’s a long time,” Safu said.

            “That’s what I said,” Nezumi added softly, almost below his breath, but Shion still heard him.

            Shion wanted to hit both of them. He stormed out of the living room into his bedroom, slammed the door, stood against it and slid down to the floor.

            He pressed his hand to his chest and felt nothing until there was a slight vibration against his back when Nezumi knocked on the door he leaned against.

            “Let me in.”

            “You have to find my heart, Nezumi. Who else could find it?” Shion asked his knees, pulled up to his empty chest.

            “I will find it,” Nezumi insisted.

            Shion closed his eyes. “What if you don’t?” he whispered.

            “Don’t be ridiculous.”

            “You warned me. You told me you wouldn’t fall in love with me, you told me over and over again you wouldn’t be the right person for me, you told me you wouldn’t ever be the man who could give me my heart.”

            “That was a long time ago. Everything has changed since then. I told you that. You know that.”

            Shion pressed his face to his knees. He’d thought he could trust Nezumi. He’d thought it’d been so clear, he’d thought he’d seen it everywhere, he’d thought it was obvious that Nezumi loved him, that he loved Nezumi.

            Maybe he’d been wrong.

            “Shion.”

            “Just tell me,” Shion whispered, into his legs so he could barely hear himself. “Just tell me if it’s not you, and then I can move on. I’m running out of time.”

            When Shion heard Nezumi’s voice again, it was lower, as if Nezumi had sat on the floor as well. Shion pictured Nezumi with his back against the door, his knees to his chest, the mirror pose of Shion on the other side of the door.

            “It’s me, Shion. I know it is. I’ll find your heart. I promise you.”

            The promise was even worse. Nezumi had already broken his promise that he would not fall in love with Shion. What was to stop him from breaking this promise too?

*

Nezumi, too, began to worry, and Shion knew this because he knew everything about Nezumi.

            He knew this also because he heard Nezumi talking to Safu about it, when Shion had nine months left to find his heart. They were at his and Safu’s apartment, and Shion woke to the sound of voices.        

            He looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was half past three in the morning. He went to his bedroom door, listened out the crack of it.

            “It never takes this long. I’ve been in love with him since the goddamn day we met,” Nezumi said, and if Shion didn’t know Nezumi’s voice so well, he might have thought it was someone else speaking.

            As it was, Shion suspected he was dreaming. That would be a more likely scenario. He pressed his hand to his chest. In his dreams, he always had a heartbeat.

            All that came back was stillness.

            “He’s a rare case. We already knew that from his appearance, all three signifiers instead of just one. It probably just takes more time with him.”

            “It’s not supposed to take any time at all. You fall in love with the right person, the right person falls in love with you, and you get your heart back. That’s how it works.” Nezumi’s voice was strained.

            “Be patient. What else can we do?”

            There was a long pause. Shion peeked out the crack of the door and could see nothing but the empty hallway and along the carpet a shadow of fallen light. He assumed Nezumi and Safu were in the kitchen.

            Nezumi’s voice came low and small. “What if it’s not me?”

            “I know you can’t believe that.”

            “If it’s someone else that’s supposed to give him his heart, and he’s wasting his last nine months with me – ”

            “Who else? It has to be you, Nezumi, nothing has ever been so obvious than that it would be you.”

            “He’d have his goddamn heart by now if it were me! Don’t you give a damn, Safu? You know him better than anyone, don’t you want him to find his heart before it’s too late?”

            “Of course I do, and that’s why you need to trust yourself. You’re right, I do know him better than anyone, and I know that you’re the one who can find his heart.”

            “Then why haven’t I found it? What am I doing wrong?” Nezumi shouted.

            “Don’t be so loud, you’ll wake him!”

            “I should wake him. I can’t leave him in the middle of the night, he’ll never forgive me for that,” Nezumi said, his voice hard.

             “Nezumi, you can’t – ”

            Shion tried to piece together the meaning of his words, of Safu’s objection, but was still unsure when the bedroom door was swinging open.

            Shion jumped back, his hand pressed to his chest where nothing raced beneath it despite his surprise.

            “Good. You’re already awake,” Nezumi said, but there was nothing on his face that matched relief or pleasure. He looked only closed off, blank. “We need to talk.”

            “I don’t want to talk,” Shion said quickly.

            Nezumi took a step into the room. Caught Shion’s hand in his, pulled him to the bed, sat him down even though Shion didn’t want to sit down.

            “Nezumi – ”

            “It’s not me. If it were me, you would have your heart by now. We both know that,” Nezumi said, and Shion pulled his hand away from Nezumi’s, stood up, walked away from Nezumi who kept sitting on the edge of the bed.

            “I have nine months left. That’s a long time. I trust you to find my heart in such a long time.”

            “If I was going to find it, I would have found it by now.”

            “You don’t think I love you?” Shion demanded.

            “Is that what I said?”

            “Or is it that you don’t love me?” Shion shouted, his hands in fists.

            Nezumi stood up. “Shion, stop shouting – ”

            “Because it’s one or the other, either you don’t think I love you, or you don’t love me. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any doubt that you’d find my heart, but clearly you’re doubting it – ”

            “How can I not doubt it? This is it, Shion! I’ve got nothing else to feel, I’ve got nothing else. I thought I loved you, I thought what I felt was real, but what do I know? Maybe I just don’t know how to. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but it’s all I know how, and it’s not enough!” Nezumi yelled, so angrily it swept Shion’s breath out his lungs.

            He had seen Nezumi close down, turn cold, get angry, be livid before. But never anything like this. Never anything that burned Shion’s chest, that tightened his stomach with something like fear.

            “I don’t know how to love you harder, I have never loved harder this, I’ve never loved at all before this! Shit, Shion, I don’t have anything else in me that I’m not giving you, and it’s still not enough, it will never be enough, and I can’t let you die waiting for me to learn how to love you right! I thought I was doing it right. I thought I was feeling everything that was possible to feel, but there must be something else I just can’t manage, I must be fucked up somehow, what do you want me to say? I can’t do it right. I can’t give you your heart. I can’t – Fuck,” Nezumi breathed, his voice cracking and falling from his shout to nothing at all. One of his hands was tightened in his bangs. He turned away from Shion, and Shion watched his back to see that he was breathing hard.

            Shion stood very still and listened to Nezumi breathe. Watched the rise and fall of his shoulders. He could think of nothing to say. Nezumi had never told him he loved him, never spoken the words themselves, and Shion had never needed him to, but for a second he wondered if that would be the key – if that was all that had been missing.

            He lifted his hand slowly. Pressed it gently to his chest. Felt nothing and wanted to dig his fingernails into his skin, wanted to rip open his own chest, wanted to confront the emptiness because it wasn’t right, it wasn’t supposed to be empty still, how dare it be empty still?

            How dare it be empty after Nezumi had said those things to him? How dare it be heartless when Shion knew he was loved, he was loved enough, more than enough, probably more than anyone had ever been loved – how dare Shion’s empty chest let Nezumi doubt that even for a second?

            Nezumi’s shoulders fell and didn’t rise, and then Nezumi was turning, shaking his head before Shion said anything.

            “Don’t argue with me,” he said, and his voice was incredibly quiet. “I’ll disappear, so don’t bother wasting the nine months you’ve got left running after me, trying to find me. Find someone who’ll be what you need.”

            “You are what I need,” Shion said, his voice shaking, and he hated this because he had no doubt about the words.

            What he doubted was what Nezumi would do next. If Nezumi would stay, if Nezumi would go.

            “You need a heart.”

            “If you never find my heart, I’ll figure out how to survive without it. I know I can figure that out, but I can’t figure out how to survive without you. Don’t you dare leave me. Don’t you dare tell me to fall in love with someone else. You’re being dramatic and ridiculous, and you need to stop that now,” Shion warned, and his voice kept shaking despite his efforts to keep it steady, and Nezumi was walking closer to him, so Shion walked back, away from him, scared to death of what Nezumi could do to him next.

            He felt his back press against the wall of his room. He flattened himself against it, and then Nezumi was in front of him, reaching out, his thumb tracing the scar on Shion’s cheek.

            “Don’t waste time being mad at me,” he said quietly. “You have less than a year left, so you have to make it count, all right?”

            “Don’t you dare leave, Nezumi. I’ll never get my heart if you leave.”

            “I wish I could have been the one to give it to you. There’s nothing I want more than that,” Nezumi said, looking at Shion seriously, and Shion wanted to close his eyes, to pretend it was all a joke, Nezumi just throwing a tantrum like he sometimes did, like he was a child still, and Shion had gotten used to it.

            Nezumi’s finger was gone from Shion’s cheek. Shion kept his eyes closed, kept his eyes closed, kept his eyes closed.

            He opened them only minutes later, and only because Safu was saying his name, her voice small.

            She stood in the doorway.

            “He left,” she said gently.      

            “He’ll be back. We just had a stupid fight,” Shion said, as if Safu might not have heard everything Nezumi had been shouting.

            Safu didn’t argue with him. She nodded once, then left the doorway. Shion slid down his wall and didn’t move from the floor. He waited for Nezumi to come back, with his heart or without it, Shion would take him any way at all.

*

Despite Nezumi’s warning, Shion searched for him everywhere. His manager at the theater said Nezumi left a note with his immediate resignation. His landlord said Nezumi left a note as well, with the next two months’ rent, though the note had explained this rent was only offered because tenants were required to give two months’ notice for their leave.

            Even Karan had received a note, though she did not show it to Shion, so he stole into her bedroom when she was busy with customers, scoured her drawers and found it finally in the pocket of an apron in the kitchen.

            _Karan. Thank you for the baking lessons. Thank you for everything else. In your kitchen, I remembered what it was to have a family, and it wasn’t so terrible to remember as I thought it’d be. It was kind of incredible._

_I wish I could apologize for taking over a year of your son’s life from him and giving him nothing in return. But I can’t lie to you, and the truth is, I’m not sorry for it._

_I don’t regret a second of him._

_I’ve never cared about nor asked for forgiveness. But from you, Karan, I find myself wanting it. I hope you’ll forgive me._

_-N_

            Shion did not receive a note himself. He didn’t want a note. He didn’t even want his heart anymore.

            He just wanted Nezumi.

*

For two full months, Shion did not leave his apartment but for work and the bakery. Before this two-month stint, for the first two weeks after Nezumi left, Shion went to bars only to look for Nezumi. On finding Nezumi’s absence, he would walk right out, check another bar. He did this for two weeks, then gave up, and then he didn’t bother going out for two months until he only had six and a half months left to find his heart, and then it was a Saturday night and Safu was knocking on his bedroom door.

            “Shion! Come out! We’re going out tonight!”

            “No thanks, I’m staying in tonight,” Shion said, as if he hadn’t stayed in every night for two months.

            “He left to give you a chance to find someone else. Don’t you think you should at least honor this? Make his leaving worthwhile?” Safu asked, but she’d been making this argument for two months, and Shion found it stale, didn’t bother to reply as he used to.

            He sat at his desk reading a textbook he was considering using for his class in the summer course he was going to teach in a few months. It would probably be his last course. It was mid-March now, and Shion had until October before his ten years of heartlessness were up. He wouldn’t bother with the fall semester. It would be a nuisance to his students if he died only a month into their semester.

            “If Nezumi could see you now, he’d be really pissed off you’re not even trying,” Safu called.

            “Well, he was usually pissed off at something,” Shion told his textbook. His fingers drifted over the glossy pages tenderly. He was not seeing the text but Nezumi’s narrowed eyes, the flinch of skin at his jawline when he clenched his teeth.

            He remembered Nezumi’s anger just as vividly as he remembered everything else: Nezumi’s sharp laughter that could be loud or quiet depending on if he was laughing at Shion or laughing at a line in one of his scripts. Nezumi’s small smiles, as if he was always trying to hide them, keep his happiness under check. Nezumi humming while he iced cupcakes in Karan’s bakery. Nezumi cursing when he tripped on stacks of his own books and spilled his tea. Nezumi pulling Shion into a dance with him, the same dance Shion had spied Nezumi learning from Karan a month before. Nezumi leaning his elbow on the counter and his cheek on his hand when he read. Nezumi’s bangs falling over his eyes, his fingers pushing them to the top of his head, holding them up as he leaned down to read instructions in the cookbook Safu had bought him. Nezumi with just a towel in his hair, otherwise naked and dripping when he searched for clothes after showering. Nezumi on the edge of climaxing, fingers digging into the skin of Shion’s waist to pull their bodies together harder and faster when they fucked, his breaths loose and loud as wind from a storm. Nezumi pushing the stack of essays Shion was grading off the cushions to make room for himself right beside Shion when the rest of the couch had been available, but wasn’t what Nezumi wanted because what Nezumi wanted was to sit right up against Shion, to nudge him and elbow him and lean on him and fall asleep against him and cast his hot breath over Shion’s skin until it was no longer too cold.

            “Please, Shion. I know you’re upset about Nezumi, and I know you need more time. But you don’t have it. You can’t die in six and a half months. It’ll kill your mother. It’ll kill me. Don’t make us lose you,” Safu said quietly.

            Shion closed the textbook. Stood up from his desk. Went to his door and opened it to find Safu wiping at her eyes.

            “Oh, sorry, I’m just – ”

            “How am I supposed to fall in love with someone else when I’m still in love with him?” Shion asked her. It was not a rhetorical question. He needed to know in order to get his heart back in time. He needed to know how to move on.

            Safu stared at him with wide, wet eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

            Shion took in her worried expression, then turned away from it only to go to his closet, grab a button up shirt, shed his sweats and pull on jeans quickly, meet Safu back at his doorway.

            “Let’s go,” he told her.

            They went to the bar, and Shion found a man by the bar who looked nothing like Nezumi – was an inch or two shorter than Shion, was laughing when Shion first spotted him, had kind features and brown eyes and a blush that came instantly when Shion walked up to him and asked him if Shion could buy his next drink.

            “Oh. Okay, sure,” the man said, and Shion nodded, called for the bartender and ordered two of whatever the man was having – a gin and tonic. “How long?” the man asked, accepting his drink from the bartender.

            Shion knew what the man was asking. “Four years,” he lied, because Safu had told him to lie.

            _Six and a half months is too much pressure. You don’t want to freak anyone out or appear desperate._

            The man smiled into his glass. He had a smile that came easily. Nothing Shion had to work for. Nothing that seemed special and secret and only there because the man couldn’t suppress it. Nothing at all like the smiles Shion liked, but Shion took it anyway.

            He couldn’t be picky. He had six and a half months left.

*

Shion slept with seven men in seven days. After the seventh left his and Safu’s apartment on Sunday morning, Shion poured himself coffee from the carafe Safu had filled.

            “The point isn’t to be having meaningless sex,” she told him.

            “I’m rebounding.”

            “Seven times?”

            “Why are you keeping track?” Shion asked back.

            “You wasted a week on these men. Is there any of them you’d want to call back? To follow up with?”

            “To fall in love with, you mean?” Shion countered, turning so that his coffee sloshed out his mug, trickled on his hand and a little bit of the counter.

            Safu had her hands on her hips. “Yes. Yes, Shion, to fall in love, that is what I mean. That’s what you have to do, you have just a week over six months left now. Call one of them back.”

            “I don’t want to call them back. I want – ”

            “Nezumi! Yes, I know, I know, but he’s not here, and he’s not coming back, and he’s not returning your heart.”

            Shion slammed down his coffee mug so that it sloshed again. “Why don’t you go fall in love before you tell me to do it again. You think it’s easy? You think I can just force myself to do it?”

            “You fell in love with Nezumi pretty instantly. It was easy with him.”

            “Because it was Nezumi! I don’t want to fall in love again! You can’t force me to do anything!” Shion yelled, leaving the kitchen without cleaning his spilled coffee.

            “Fine, just stay heartless and die then!” Safu shouted at his back, and then Shion was out the kitchen, at his room, slamming his room door.

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't read the note at the beginning of the fic, go back and read it now!


End file.
